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Denalquens, DDT and Sceptik - Recordkeeping Hypothetical,
Recordkeeping in the Information Age : Blind Spots and Hot Spots Seminar of the Queensland Branch of the Australian Society
of Archivists, September 2000 Welcome to 2007 in the State of Denalquens. Denalquens is one of the 6 states of Larasutia and is a major primary producer for Larasutia, having 65% of its land under rural cultivation and also boasting 75% of the national output in terms of mining income. Larasutia, along with other nations of the world adopted the Kyoto Protocol of the United National Framework Convention on Climate Control during 1998. The target reduction in greenhouse gas emission that the government of Larasutia has imposed is 108% (ie only 8% increase) over the next 5 years (by 2009). The Protocol contained a capacity to trade in emissions and within Larasutia, this model of emission trading has been adopted within all environmental legislation. Essentially, trading in emissions means that targets are set for particular industries and for specific types of emissions, such as greenhouse gases. Each company or business has to meet these targets, but there is a provision that those who produce more than the target savings can sell their excess to those who fail to make the target. There is a new industry developing to establish and manage 'sinks' or things that are designed to absorb the dangerous greenhouse gases. As well as the growth in commodity sinks, there is a new trading industry emerging. Denalquens needs to manage quite large and complex targets set for it because of its large mining industry and its reliance on consumption of fossil fuels for electricity generation. The Denalquens Development Titan (DDT) is the body which administers the state's environment, land management, pollution and other sustainable development initiatives. DDT is an entrepreneurial body and in 2000 it licensed its sector of the trading market in greenhouse emissions off to a new company - SCEPTIK (Squeaky Clean Emissions Project to Implement Kyoto). SCEPTIK is a twenty first century outfit, based off shore and working entirely electronically through web based electronic trading software, web based transactions systems and dissemination of information through web pages. Its Chief Executive Office, Init Forabuck, was in Denalquens at the launch of the initiative, to cultivate the government and leverage his business firmly into the web-based futures market for all environmental trading, within Denalquens, Larasutia and internationally. A key component to making the trading system work is information. The emission data and target data is kept up to date and published on the DDT web site. Additionally traders have been licensed by various governments and DDT has issued certificates to trade on the SCEPTIK site. The SCEPTIK site has developed an auction platform for emission permits. It also establishes a market for the purchase of emission credits. DDT has been promoting the emissions trading scheme since 2000. The investment opportunity for the rural industry is seen to be in the development of 'sinks' to offset the State's large and growing sources of emission. Similarly farmers can gain credit points in the system by protecting land from clearing for grazing or agriculture (excepting regrowth land which is exempt from the credit and control systems), by implementing land management plans according to the regional guidelines developed through local community consultation and by tree planting. Farmers are key targets for trading their credit points generated locally. Honest Joe Farmer assessed the situation in 2000. He decided that this
environment friendly operation was a worthwhile thing to do in his retirement
years and the returns looked even better than the macadamia nut plantations
that had been his mainstay production crop (for tax loss purposes for
the blokes in the city) during his active years. Honest Joe consulted
his local DDT office, obtaining guidelines and after reporting significant
tree planting on his property, applied for a carbon credit rating 5 years
later. The documentation he had to provide was laid down by the Carbon
Accounting Standard (LS 52045) and included:
In July 2003, after an independent third party audit by one of the firms registered with SCEPTIK, he was awarded 500 carbon credits supported with carbon certificates (each with a unique identifier and registered through SCEPTIK 'certificate electronic system' - known colloquially as CESPOOL). Now Honest Joe can lodge his carbon credits for purchase at auction through the trading system having set the appropriate period of sale, which of course, extends into the future. Kyle Oto needs to purchase carbon credits for his power company to offset their emissions. He registers with the SCEPTIK site as a trader. He then electronically lodges his bid for credits against 15 certificates. He loses the deal to others. This pattern repeats a number of times over the next 6 months. Oto is getting antsy. He needs these credit certificates to stay in business. The prices just keep getting higher and he feels deliberately and malevolently excluded from the process which is apparently state endorsed. Kyle Oto complains through the mechanisms on the web site and to DDT. There is no more than cursory response. He feels brushed off by the responses and meanwhile things are getting critical for his business need to report compliance. He increasingly feels victimised and isolated suspecting blackmail, deliberate inflation of prices and preferential treatment to cronies is at the back of this. Not content with ineffectual complaint mechanisms, Kyle starts to investigate the experience of other potential consumers and finds a pattern of behaviour going on. By comparing experiences and their electronic receipts for bids lodged, the network EONS (Emitters only, not suppliers) find that there is a indeed patterns emerging and hardening suspicion that their bids have been tampered with. Unrest and rumbling seethe in the background, but meanwhile, DDT think that Init Forabuck and SCEPTIK are the best thing since sliced bread, regularly returning them good percentages on trading profit and enabling the healthy reporting against the Kyoto Protocol. The muted seething suddenly erupts when, in 2007, Ernest N Deavor, an honest young ex employee of SCEPTIK turns whistle blower. He was employed by Init Forabuck as a web based programmer to work locally in Denalquens, so is, in effect, the company representative on the ground. Ernest was instructed to devise programs enabling Init and his executive team to inspect bids prior to the stated time of the auction and siphon out those who met some pre-set criteria. Slightly surprised at this practice, Ernest was told that it was commonplace and part of the verification of prudential requirements and authentication regime. Ernest also became concerned when he noticed a constant unexplained presence of an electronic trader known as 'Rogue Trader' in temporal proximity to these transactions. Ernest because convinced all this was highly dodgy and started to dig. The story continues Ernest started digging through the audit logs supporting the system. This was extremely tedious as there was no proper management system in place for transactions to be placed into business context. It was trolling through chronological transactions and then making human based context connections. Ernest took 6 months to piece together what was happening. He found that a practice of altering the electronic bids by Rogue Trader happened after an email with a digital certificate and ecash attachments was sent to Init or other senior executives. ********** With Ernest outraged and now backed by EONS, the industry discontent and leaking became a public embarrassment for DDT who had been crowing over their counterparts in other states on their up to the minute technology and success in the field. Now, embarrassingly, it was all set to blow up in their faces. ********** They worked on various media releases to attempt to discredit Ernest as a crackpot and a disturbed individual. A quick inquiry was established into the mess and extradition orders obtained for Init who was found lurking anonymously in Tiera del Fuego. SCEPTIK was immediately placed into receivership and the futures trading function reverted to DDT. ********** The stream of invective that was released during the inquiry and the attempts to lay blame was astounding to the magistrate appointed to the inquiry, Ian Vestigator. Slanderous statements were made and Honest Joe Farmer's name cropped up more than once. A site visit by Ian Vestigator to the Farmer mansion revealed not one acre of planted crop, which then meant deliberately falsified records, corrupt auditors all done under the complicit eye of SCEPTIK. Honest Joe with long standing links to the newly elected government, and through the macadamia nut investors' access to plenty of people in positions of influence, threatened dire international retribution. Ernest was also vilified in the inquiry and threatened to sue. ********** One of the first acts of the new government was to suspend the inquiry which had been hastily and dodgily constituted anyway, and order the destruction of the records to placate Honest Joe. Ian Vestigator knew how explosive this material potentially was and sought and was granted indemnity from prosecution by the Cabinet. The Denalquens State Recordkeeping Officer (Mem Morry) was instructed to endorse the destruction of the records, action taken by Igor Beavor, a slightly over eager lackey to the inquiry. Mem Morry complied to the pressure from political masters. The government just wanted the matter stopped, Honest Joe placated and the problem to go away. ********** Meanwhile DDT also had records as did SCEPTIK. SCEPTIK's policy records were sent with the function back to DDT. Its hard copy (paper) records were shipped off to the hands of the Receiver, Effy Shency, who authorised the destruction of the remainder of the business papers, while retaining the financial records to sort out the outstanding debt issues, as is the norm. In DDT frantic instructions were issued by the Director General, Pol Looter, to the Manager of Corporate Recordkeeping, Arthur Ority, to get rid of the hot stuff. Arthur Ority didn't know how to respond to this situation, which placed him in an impossible situation. He called his network of contacts and asked about similar situations and what had been helpful. *********** How could he comply? His responsibility in real life seemed confined to the paper files and now he was being asked to deal with all the proliferation of electronic systems across myriad departmental boundaries. The responsibility was blinding and thrust unexpectedly into his normal working life. Arthur ended up prone on stress leave. ********** Meanwhile the external pressure to clean this up kept coming. The people who had been involved in the system and felt ripped off wanted answers and compensation. Pol Looter was finding the political seat getting very hot. Another inquiry was established under pressure. This inquiry revealed considerable administrative problems with the complaints process in DDT. Indeed an email came to light between Pol and Init. This revealed that Pol had realised that all was not rosy with the SCEPTIK arrangements as long ago as 2005, but had done nothing about it. ********** Pol Looter decided to stand up publicly and apologise to the government and people of Denalquens for the apparently widespread practice of marking complaints with the letter H (meaning not to be revealed) and stashing them in a locker room. He vowed to fight on and reclaim the good governance and ethical standards required by the people - and would personally take a pay cut to do it. ********** The inquiry also revealed the extent of the government inaction over monitoring and regulating SCEPTIK. In the period between the two inquiries, however, significant gaps seem to have appeared in the public record. But specialist forensic recordkeepering company CryptoRec were called in. ********** CryptoRec were able to reclaim many of the DDT electronic records. Arthur Ority had only been able to deal with identifying and destroying the paper records. DDT management had consistently refused to expand Arthur's role into electronic recordkeeping and now they had no systems in place. As a result, using Ernest N Deavor's specialist knowledge of processes and the CryptoRec geeks technical know how, they were able to reconstruct transactions from both DDTs records and the SCEPTIK back up systems. Along with discovery orders executed against the external authentication agencies combined with copies of transaction records maintained by individuals who felt exposed and exploited, the pieces came slowly together. Questions for more detailed audience discussion What are the recordkeeping problems identified in this hypothetical?
Are any of the problems directly attributable to the fact that electronic transactions and electronic business were the norm for SCEPTIK? What, if anything, might have protected Mem Mory or Sloan Steady from the political pressure to destroy?
Would things have been better/worse if the destruction just happened and was never reported to Mem Mory?
How justified is the decision to withhold the information that legal action was pending on the inquiry records Mem Mory was instructed to authorise for destruction? Is this an appropriate use of disposal as removal of access? Did it work?
What formalised appraisal framework might have been applied to these records in ideal circumstances?
If you were the President of the relevant branch of the RMAA or ASA in these circumstances and were asked for support of the actions of your members, Mem Mory and Sloan Steady, what would you do? · Statement of support? · Lobby organisations and make individuals look bad or deficient? · Indicate deliberate intention to deceive · Outrage on the side of the whistle blower · How effective? What actions against Pol Looter might the government of Denalquens take?
Are there any mechanisms that Sloan Steady might have pursued to raise his profile within DDT? What might these be? One of the problems might be that no one had the full picture of what was going on. The information was distributed between various agencies and individuals. What implications does this have for a knowledge management framework? Could some/any of these occur if a framework like the new Queensland Public Records Bill was in place? What type of protection would legislation like the Queensland Public Records Bill afford in situations like this? How might DDT have reacted to a more proactive Denalquens record regime regulated by the State Archives? Why/ What would work? |
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